Fie crept to the edge, peering through the brush. Two figures emerged from the dunes, looking to and fro before settling on the sandpines.
The sand at Fie’s back hissed as the prince sat up. “I think the one in gray is a local,” Tavin whispered. “The other is Viimo. She’s one of Rhusana’s best trackers.”
Fie guessed Viimo to be the ruddy-faced skinwitch with a cap of pale curls who looked a few years older than them.
A skinwitch. A Vulture. Fie’s heart began to pound.
The woman shushed the man at her side, then reached for a belt of narrow iron cylinders.
A Vulture. One of Tatterhelm’s trackers. One of the queen’s best.
Jasimir inhaled sharp. “That’s a flare. She’s calling for—”
They never found out. Tavin thrust out a hand, and Viimo and her guide fell to their knees, frozen.
Fie stared. She’d forgotten the Hawk blood Birthright meant more than healing.
“Hurry,” Tavin gritted through his teeth, and she saw red blooming in his eyes as vessels burst. “Knock them out, tie them up, whatever you do—hurry.”
Fie’s heartbeat roared in her ears.
Jasimir started to climb through the copse. Fie beat him to it.
She hurled herself at Viimo, knocking her to the sand, a furious scream rising above the roar of the sea. Fie clawed and scratched and rained blows upon any flash of skinwitch she saw. Her own fists split at the knuckles, but she didn’t care, spitting curse after curse through the blood and the pain until Jasimir pulled her off.
She’d been in a handful of scrapes in her life; she’d lived a handful of scrapes through the teeth of the dead. She wasn’t a particular gifted fighter, for that did not a long-lived Crow make.
However, she found it cruelly easy to hit someone who couldn’t hit back. Perhaps that was why the other castes liked it so.
“Not what I had in mind, but close enough.” Tavin pinned Viimo facedown in the sand, one knee on her back. Jasimir tossed him a length of hemp rope from the other man, lying bound and unconscious nearby. “Viimo. It’s been a while.”
“Choke on horseshit, you little bastard,” Viimo spat back, face scored with scratches.
Fie yanked Viimo’s head up by her blond curls. “How many Crows did you kill?”
Viimo frowned. “As in today? The last year? Got to be a mite more specific.”
“Fie left you both your eyes,” Tavin said, mild. “All things considered, I’m fairly sure she’s willing to revoke that decision if you don’t start talking.”
Viimo snorted at him. “You ain’t got the tripes for it, Hawkling. And even if you did, you ain’t got the time. How long you reckon before Tatterhelm comes crawling right up your—”
“Then we cut to the point.” Fie let go and pried a tooth from her string. A Crane witch answered her call, an ancient magistrate whose righteous fury resonated with Fie’s own wrath, ready to ring the truth in Viimo like a bell. “Sit her up.”
Tavin pulled Viimo to her knees. The skinwitch’s face soured when she spied the tooth. “Ugh. Cheater.”
“How many Crows survived your ambush yesterday?” Fie asked.
The Vulture fought at first, her eyes burning, lips twisted shut. But the Crane Birthright of honesty would not be denied, and neither would Fie, and so the truth flossed through Viimo’s clenched teeth: “Ten. Not counting your dead traitor boy, o’course.”
Fie’s heart sank. She’d lost one Crow. “There should be eleven. Who… who died?”
“Dead gods if I know.” The skinwitch shrugged. Fie near went for her eyes again. “But it’ll be nine soon. One’s well on her way to wolf-feed.”
“Who?” Fie’s voice came out higher than she wanted. The Crane tooth slipped. “Is she wounded?”
Viimo gave Fie a look of disbelief. “No, just pining for her homelands.” Fie yanked the tooth tighter, and Viimo grimaced. “Ofcourseshe’s wounded. Oldest woman in your kin, caught a few too many arrows from us on the bridge. She’ll take water, but she ain’t got much more’n a week left in her.”
Wretch.It had to be. Wretch, who’d helped Fie practice all her whistle signals, who’d schooled her in laceroot and counting days and moons, who’d been the last one to cut Fie’s hair before this terrible oath. And she was dying among Vultures.
